User blog:NibiruMul/Forgotten fairy tale collection reviews, part 4
I've become acquainted with another forgotten fairy tale collection. This one is called The Child's Own Book, and it was published in 1901. It was compiled by a board of editors, the chief of whom was a man named Thomas Bailey Aldrich. I found it on a webstie called Kellscraft. This collection is out of print, so unfortunately there's no way to get a copy. This collection contains various stories by Charles Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, as well as several stories from the Arabian Nights, among other stories. No Grimm or Andersen stories are present in the collection. (A lot of Victorian collections don't have them.) I'll go over some of the stories. The stories are listed alphabetically. I'm not going to go over all of them - just the ones I find noteworthy. Aladdin is the first story in the collection. While I do like the color illustration, this isn't one of the better renditions. This one absolutely confused me, since it basically implies that the whole story was just a dream. I don't remember that being part of the original story - or any other version of the story. Blanch and Rosalinda is the same story as Beaumont's The Widow and her Two Daughters. I've seen numerous names for this story. Blanch and Rosalinda, Blanche and Vermilion... (They also have Prince Fatal and Prince Fortune - another bonus for me!) This collection also features Bluebeard, which was surprisingly common in Victorian collections. This collection uses the typical Victorian convention of depicting Bluebeard as Middle Eastern. This convention arose because of the popularity of pantomime, which changed the setting to the Middle East. (In contrast, French illustrations always portrayed Bluebeard as European.) Although in a lot of illustrations (like this one), the girl's family will be depicted as European, making the illustrations rather unfortunate. Now here's a story that's rather interesting. It's called The Discreet Princess. Though here it's credited to Perrault, it was actually written by his niece, Marie-Jeanne L'Heritier. It was published in 1696 - it was one of the first French literary fairy tales published. It's about a clever princess named Finette (or Finetta as she's called here) and her two not-so-clever sisters. An evil prince tries to marry them, but Finette tricks the prince three times and eventually wins over the prince's kind brother. I really enjoyed this story and was glad to see it. I posted it to Scribd, where I used the original French names. Fortunio is the same story as Belle-Belle ou Le Chevalier Fortune. This rendition is shorter and less detailed, but I still enjoyed it. The Fisherman and the Genie is another Arabian Nights story. It's about an old fisherman who finds a copper jar with the Seal of Solomon on it. A genie comes out when he opens it. The genie was stuck in their for so long, that he would offer a choice of deaths for anyone who freed him. The genie later helps the fisherman out, and the fisherman is later able to become rich marry his children off - one of his daughters marries the sultan. Nourjahad is another story in the collection that I liked. It's not an authentic Arabian Nights story - it was actually written by an Anglo-Irish novelist and playwright named Frances Sheridan. It's about a man namd Nourjahad who is tricked by the sultan Schemzeddin into believing that he is immortal and that his sleep lasts for years. Disaster comes when Nourjahad ends up leading a hedonistic lifestyle due to his immortality. Eventually, Nourjahad comes to his senses and finds out that this was all a trick. From what I've heard, the original story is much longer, though I can't find an unabridged version at the moment. This collection also have a retelling of The Ram, here titled The Royal Ram . It's relatively similar to Andrew Lang's retelling, except in this one, the princess dies as well. I noticed that Victorian retellings tend to do one of two things: either tack on a happy ending where the ram regains his human form, or make the ending darker by having the princess die. Another d'Aulnoy story present in this collection is The Imp Prince, here titled The Invisible Prince . I enjoyed this one too. This story's always great no matter what rendition I read. Peronella is another favorite of mine. I first found it in the collection where I found all the other sotries of Beaumont. The author of this story was a guy by the name of Fenelon. Peronella is about a girl named Peronella who exchanges places with an old queen and learns the virtues of living a humble life. I plan on doing OCs for The Discreet Princess and Peronella. There are other stories in the collection, but many of them are either stories we all know of (like Cinderella) or stories that aren't that great (some of them were simply uninteresting, while others got a little heavy-handed with the religious themes). Overall, the book was decent, with some stories very good, others not. You can look at the whole thing here if you're curious. Here are the contents of the stories: #Aladdin, or, The Wonderful Lamp #Ali Baba, or, The Forty Thieves #Beauty and the Beast #Blanch and Rosalinda #Bluebeard #The Children in the Wood #Cinderella, or, The Little Glass Slipper #The Discreet Princess #Prince Fatal and Prince Fortune #Fortunatus #Fortunio #The Fisherman and the Genie #Little Hunch-Back #Nourjahad #Jack the Giant Killer #The Royal Ram #Jack and the Beanstalk #Puss in Boots #Riquet with the Tuft #The Three WIshes #Fair One with the Golden Locks #Tom Thumb #The Invisible Prince #Little Red Riding Hood #Robin Hood #Peronella #The White Cat #The Seven Champions of Christendom #Griselda #Graciosa and Percinet #Hop-o'-My-Thumb #The History of Little Jack #Whittington and his Cat #The Yellow Dwarf #Valentine and Corson Category:Blog posts